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Music Composition Books
Scott Jarrett
Holly Day
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Published:
January 27, 2021

Music Composition For Dummies

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Overview

Create the next big pop hit, bang out a catchy jingle, or write an iconic film score, with music composition skills

Today's composers create music for television, film, commercials, and even video games. Music Composition For Dummies brings you up to speed with the theory and technicality of composing music. With easy-to-understand content that tracks to a typical music composition intro course, this book will teach you how to use music theory to write music in a variety of forms. You'll discover the latest tech tools for composers, including composing software and online streaming services where you can publish your musical creations.

And you'll get a rundown on the world of intellectual property, so you can collab and remix fairly, while retaining all the rights to your own creations.

  • Get a clear introduction to music theory and songwriting concepts
  • Learn about composition best practices for movies, TV, video games, and beyond
  • Explore sample music to help you understand both artistic and commercial composition
  • Launch into the latest technologies to mix and share your creations

Great for music students and aspiring artists, Music Composition For Dummies, is an easy-to-read guide to writing and producing all kinds of tunes.

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About The Author

Scott Jarrett has been a theatrical music director and has taught recording labs, voice, guitar, music theory, and composition. He has worked with artists from Willie Nelson to Dave Grusin.

Holly Day has created work for over 3,000 international publications including Guitar One Magazine, Music Alive!, and Brutarian Magazine. She is also the co-author of Music Theory For Dummies.

Sample Chapters

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music composition for dummies

CHEAT SHEET

For quick reference, most of what you need to know about music composition is covered in this cheat sheet. Whether you’re sitting with a band and need to know what someone means when they say, “Take it up a fifth!” or you can’t remember the proper form for the 8-bar blues, this handy info is right at your fingertips on one convenient page.
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Articles from
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Atonality is a condition of music in which the constructs of the music do not "live" within the confines of a particular key signature, scale, or mode. To the uninitiated listener, atonal music can sound like chaotic, random noise. However, atonality is one of the most important movements in 20th century music.
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If you're into music composition, you need to know the Circle of Fifths because it shows the relationships between major keys and their relative minors. In the following image, the major keys are indicated with capital letters, and their relative minors are in lowercase. Also shown are the number of sharps or flats that you put in the key signature for each key.
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The piano is a well-loved music composition tool for a reason. Not only do the piano's 88 keys contain virtually all the notes you'll ever need to create a solid foundation for a full orchestral composition, but the entire piano is tuned to concert pitch. Concert pitch simply means that when you hit a C on the piano, you are actually playing a C.
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Music concrête is a type of music that sprang directly out of the evolution of music technology. As a throwback to classical music being inspired by poetic forms, music concrête has its roots in the 1920s Surrealist literary practice of cut-up and fold-in composition. In cut-up, writers would physically cut up existing pieces of literature and rearrange the order of the phrases and words, whereas in fold-in compositions, a group of writers would write random phrases, one at a time, on a piece of paper, folding the paper over after each turn so that the next writer couldn't see what the previous writer had written.
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As you compose music, you quickly realize that some chords just sound right together, and some don't. The following is a list of the tried-and-true major chord sequences that always sound good when played together: I chords can appear anywhere in a progression ii chords lead to I, V, or vii° chords iii
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The most interesting periods of music are those at the turning point from one accepted musical style to the next, such as the break from Baroque music to Classical music. These turning points are generally not recognized during the period itself; in fact, they're often dismissed as fads. With hindsight, it's much easier to tell which composers and what periods of music ended up making the greatest impact on the course of Western music.
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For quick reference, most of what you need to know about music composition is covered in this cheat sheet. Whether you’re sitting with a band and need to know what someone means when they say, “Take it up a fifth!” or you can’t remember the proper form for the 8-bar blues, this handy info is right at your fingertips on one convenient page.
Read More
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In composing music, you follow certain rhythm forms. These musical forms outline placement for accented and unaccented beats that form a pattern for a passage or for a whole piece. The following list offers a handy guide to the different parts in different types of compositions: One part form: A, AA, AAA, and
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If you're composing music for more than one instrument, you know that writing for transposing instruments can get confusing. The following list offers some easy ways to approach each kind: E flat instruments: Find the relative minor, make it major, and then write in that key. Notes are therefore moved up a sixth, or down a minor third.
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If you're composing music, you generally use one of the seven main types of musical scales, or modes, generally referred to as Greek scales. Each one consists of eight notes, combining whole and half steps in slightly different combinations to produce different feelings in the listener. The following list sho
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You can't overestimate the value of a good musical imagination. It's the single most powerful source for composing music — if you can tap into it. The imagination is so powerful, in fact, that it was long ago personified as the Muse. Because it's inside your head, though, your imagination is also the hardest source to put your finger on.
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